1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink-jet printer, and more particularly, to a sensor cleaning apparatus for an ink-jet printer that includes a unit cleaning a surface of a sensor, which travels together with the carriage to perform paper size and alignment sensing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, an ink-jet printer is a device for printing data transmitted from a personal computer or the like on a recording medium, such as a sheet of paper. In order to produce high quality printing, it is necessary to sense in real time a printing quality, e.g., inter alia, a width and/or an alignment state of the paper loaded, an actual ink dot print pattern, or the like of the ink-jet printer.
Accordingly, many apparatus and methods have been developed to sense the actual print quality of the ink-jet printer. One of the methods is to install a sensor on one side of a carriage in the ink-jet printer in which the sensor is supposed to sense the actual print quality. Therefore, as the ink-jet printer having the sensor is able to sense in real time the print quality, it can perform continuous printing while automatically adjusting optional printing based on sensed information by the sensor which will hereinafter be referred to as a “carriage mounted sensor”.
FIG. 1 is a view of a carriage to and a maintenance station 40 of conventional ink-jet printer having a carriage mounted sensor 30. Referring to FIG. 1, the carriage 10 reciprocates along a shaft (not shown), which extends through a shaft assembling part 11, with respect to a sheet of paper to print texts or images on the paper using an ink cartridge 20 mounted thereon.
The ink cartridge 20, which is mounted on the carriage 10, ejects ink droplets onto the paper (not shown) according to data transmitted from a controlling part (not shown) of the ink-jet printer.
The carriage 10 moves over the paper transversely along a shaft (not shown) inserted into the shaft assembling part 11.
The carriage mounted sensor 30 is installed on one side of the carriage 10 and senses in real time printing quality factors, e.g., inter alia, a paper size, a paper alignment, skews in a dot pattern, or the like.
The maintenance station 40 is located below the carriage 10 and cleans nozzles of an ink jet head of the ink cartridge 20 to prevent the cloggings of the nozzles by dried ink or by any other small particles, e.g., dust, to ensure continued high quality printing.
One or more wiper blades (not shown) are provided in the maintenance station 40 to wipe the nozzles of the ink cartridge 20.
Now, describing a printing process in detail, if the paper is fed into a printing area in the ink-jet printer having the carriage mounted sensor 30, the carriage mounted sensor 30 scans the paper in the printing area optically or using any other sensing method and senses an actual print result, e.g., the dot pattern, a carriage position with respect to a paper edge or the like. Then, the carriage 10 moves right-and-left along the shaft corresponding to the sensed information to perform printing on the paper.
Periodically, the carriage 10 is moved to a service area disposed above the maintenance station 40 in order to clean the nozzles of the ink cartridge 20. When the carriage 10 is placed above the maintenance station 40, the nozzles of the ink cartridge 20 are cleaned by a nozzle wiper 53 mounted on a movable plate 51 of a nozzle wipe assembly 50. The service station 40 may further provide one or more caps to cover the nozzles to prevent the ink in the nozzle openings from being dried.
In the meantime, while most of the ink ejected from the ink cartridge 20 is attached to the paper during the printing process, a small amount of the ink may be scattered to contaminate a surface of the carriage mounted sensor 30. The contamination of the carriage mounted sensor 30 impairs a proper operation of the carriage mounted sensor.
That is, the carriage mounted sensor 30 described above may become non-functional after use of the ink jet printer for a longer period of time. There is thus, a need in the art for an apparatus and/or method to reduce an effect of the sensor surface contamination.